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I Make $1.3M/Year With One Skill

By Starter Story

Summary

Topics Covered

  • Productized Service: The $1.3M Solopreneur Model
  • Async Operations: The Key to Maximizing Design Output
  • Lean Launch: Build and Iterate in Hours, Not Months
  • Pricing Strategy: Unlimited Requests, Variable Hourly Value
  • The Power of Niche: Specialize for Speed and Value

Full Transcript

this guy makes $1.3 million a year with a business model that's going to change the world the product eyes service he invited us into his house to show us exactly how it works how he runs it with

zero employees and how he does it all from the comfort of his own home Brad started building this idea while he was working at 9 to5 and the crazy part is he didn't quit his job until he was

making $80,000 a month I did all of my work during my zoom calls that I had with my team so the secret behind his business is a pricing strategy that nobody is using and we're going to break

down why this is making him one of the highest paid solopreneurs in the world a lot of people say it's like the Netflix of design in this video he shares everything how he launched in 24 hours

how he got his first client and how anyone can build a life-changing business while still working your day job I'm Pat walls and this is starter story all right Brett it's absolutely

amazing what you've built can you tell me exactly what you do and how you make money yeah so I sell basically design as a subscription uh it's kind of called a product High service which basically

means that I sell packages for clients to you know pick and And subscribe to it's about $5,000 a month they get you know certain number of things and I don't have any contractors no employees

never have had any sort of help whatsoever so you're telling me you run a $1.3 million a year design agency all by yourself how exactly do you set that up it's really pretty bare Bon so what I

do is users subscribe to my service basically every client gets a Trello board they get immediate access to it which is a big selling point of a product I service and they can begin in putting design requests into the queue

and they're basically worked on one by one I work on a request for a client every couple days may take 30 minutes to an hour to complete send it to them go through the feedback stages and then

rinse and repeat essentially so I do that for all 20 clients I also don't have any meetings with clients so once you're on boarded you know there's no Zoom calls there's no even really any slack commun everything happens async

which allows me to basically dedicate my entire day to just design work and that's it take me through process of when you came up with the idea and then getting started with it you know I I always kind of wanted to go into

freelancing want to start an agency I knew I didn't want to work for someone else I had done that my whole life wasn't that just wasn't for me and I happened to come across another agency doing something similar to what I'm

doing today they were doing it for graphic design but I was a web designer um I did landing pages and product design I thought I could take what they do apply to what I'm good at and just make it the the highest quality option

out there so it's basically just taking an idea that already existed in making it better and I built it in a day built it on a Saturday it was essentially just a web flow onepage site that I stood up

and set up a trell board kind of structure I launched it on product time which is you know a pretty cliche way of launching a product but yeah it was it was a pretty simple probably took me six seven hours to build and that was it and

did you have a full-time job at that time I had a full-time job for 3 and 1 half years running design Joy I quit when I was making 80,000 a month and um I joke because I did all my work dur

during my zoom calls that I had with my team so but I did get all my work done I just you know I I was more focused on design joy and it got to the point where I looked back you know 3 and a half years later thought okay maybe this

actually is something that I can sustain so I finally made the lead yeah all right Brett so most agencies charged by the hour but you're doing something totally different a product High service can you tell me more about that yeah I mean it's it's basically like instead of

charging hourly or having to like quote individual projects and write up proposals for clients I have off the shelf packages that people can choose from and all of them you know include unlimited requests which means you know

you're not charge per hour and you pick a plan and no matter how much or how little you use it you end up paying the same price a lot of people say it's basically a retainer well not really a retainer could be anything and you're still tracking time and you're

technically paying by hour even though it's packaged up to a fixed price but the way that I work is you know have some clients that end up paying $5,000 an hour if they have one request or 300 if they have several so just the hourly

rate depends on you know how many requests clients have how can people like you were before in your 9 to-5 job take their work and productize it and build a business like this I would say

like my advice to someone actually wanting to do what I've done is no matter what industry you're in so if you're in content writing if you're in video production or maybe you just create YouTube thumbnails or if you're

in design find the things that you're good at and Niche down like for me I'm a designer which means I could technically do a lot of things but there's certain things that I'm good at and that's like you know branding product design landing page design I don't wor really worry

about the other stuff cuz I'm not fast at it so like find the things that you're fast at build a package around it like bundle it up come up with pricing that that makes it attractive but also makes it worth your time and then just

stand up a website simple as that awesome let's talk about cost to run a product TI service what kind of tools do you use what do you pay for and how much does it cost to run this business yeah

so it costs me precisely $176 a month to run design Joy so I use figma for design web flow you know hosting Adobe and shutter stock which is um 100 bucks a

month by far my most expensive uh tool that I use so everything else that I use which is a number of tools including Trello and air table I use basically the free versions of it you haven't spent a penny on marketing how did you get

clients when you first started and how do you get clients now yeah so I took the route of you know for those unfamiliar with it it's called Product time if you come out new product you can post it on there it has an up voting

system tons of hits per day so if you're if you're mildly successful you'll get some interest and some clients right away so I took that route then I eventually again started like building in public joining a bunch of communities

today my primary means of getting leads is like basically anytime I tweet so Twitter you know came on board for me about a year ago I was very late to the scene and I built a mild following on the platform and you know that's

basically where most of my leads are generated today you're a creative guy you have lots of little side projects and you do more than just design Joy how do you come up with new ideas and test them quickly um I basically do the the

bare minimum possible so I I I Know Myself quite well you know with design Joy like I said it was a day I just launched a website a one page site with scribbles it was like a 6our project

right um with my course I just like went in my car recorded some audio files and uploaded them and that was it so I'd rather do that than spend weeks months building something that may ultimately

fail and waste of bunch of time I'd rather just release something minimally viable out there and see if it bites and if it does then I can figure things out from there all right real quick on the topic of winning ideas I have to tell

you about the business that I built it's called starter story and it's literally 4,000 ideas case studies and courses about how regular people build online businesses to millions in Revenue you

can get a ton of inspiration from these but we also show you how much money they're making how they came up with their idea and how they grew their businesses to Millions it's only $1 to try it out for 7 days and yes you can

cancel it but if you're serious about surrounding yourself with successful Founders who have been there before then definitely check it out at starterstory.com I put the link right below in the bio if you want to try it

out back to the video with Brett I hope you enjoy it see you how can other designers or people that want to get into design get good like you yeah I think the big thing it's not fun to hear but the big thing is just doing it you

know I did not go to school for design I basically taught myself how to do it and I was you know in design programs all day long basically mimicking good design that was already out there so I I got to understand the tool very well I got to

understand how to get get to that end result I surround myself with good design I'm constantly seeking it out I'm constantly on like dble and all these landing page inspo sites and following

good designers to kind of stay on top of what's in I did fake projects like I would find a project and like Rebrand it or redesign it as long as you're doing it as long as you're inigma like pushing

pixels every day you'll eventually get there [Music] what's a typical day in the life for a

solopreneur so for me uh it's it looks like this I mean I wake up about 7:30 in the morning my wife goes to the gym I usually watch the kids till about 10:30

which you could look at as like as a curse but like I look at as blessing cuz that's the time I get to really like dedicate my time and spending with them so I I don't start work until about

11:30 to 12: and then I work till about 4: to 5 in the afternoon and then spend time with the family and changing diapers and doing you know that sort of thing watching TV just pretty boring

stuff we don't really go out and do much you know it's hard to with a baby and little kids so we pretty much stay inside um but yeah that's about it do you have any sort of routines or anything like that that you like to do

routines no like I'm not a good time manager like surprisingly like you would think that I would be doing this but my escapes so like one thing I like to do is every Friday night I like to play video games with my friends back home

like family like my uncle brother like bunch of us get play video games but that's basically the only routine that I have other than watching the kids in the morning and working from that time period and that's that's pretty much it

man all right our final question that we asked to all of uh the people that we talked to if you could go back sit on Brett's shoulder when you're first getting started what's the one piece of

advice that you would give to him yeah I think for me uh I say this a lot I mean I'm a pretty insecure entrepreneur I don't think I'm alone in

that and I may come across as a confident person but I'm really not like I I I see myself below a lot of people so when I when I when I created design Joy I mean there was a reason why I kept

a full-time job until I was making 80k a year like that's how insecure I was at actually making this work and so that brought on a lot of stress like what if this doesn't last like what am I going to do what's my backup plan um so it

held me it held me back for a long time and put a lot of like strain on my back um so I I would probably tell them like to believe in yourself that like you're capable of doing this doing it and

believing that you can as corny as that sounds is what I needed all along because I I was like I almost pictured design Joy is like I equated it to like a shooting star like it happen so quick

and I felt like it could dissipate so quickly too so it prevented me from making that leap and like and when you when I made that leap my Revenue doubled the next month like when I left my job

to take on design Joy full-time it doubled the next month so like I wasted so much time like double efforts like keeping my main job and keeping that job that like like if I just had confidence in myself I

could have like been where I was today like 2 years later or 2 years ago so as cliche as it sounds what it worked for

me dope cool well thank you Brett you do design work you'll have a Porsche [Music]

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